Tories rocked by the miners' victory
Socialist Press1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
"It is one thing to take the reins of office. It is quite another to impose the defeats on the working class that are necessary to make Tory policies stick . . .
The Tories remember all too vividly how workers' readiness to fight every attack on their trade unions and living standards led in 1974 to the premature fall of the Heath government. Callaghan was in turn forced into the 1979 election with his policy of wage controls torn to tatters by the massive pay struggles in both private industry and the public sector."
Socialist Press assessment of the election results, May 9 1979.
Thatcher's undignified collapse last week in front of an unofficial strike of coal miners has now made this assessment a living reality. But why did it take 21 months to happen?
The reality was that the Tory government had gained office not by any retreat or weakness of the working class, but as a result of the historic crisis of the working class—the crisis of leadership.
For five years Callaghan and Healey had implemented Tory policies.
They had set the precedent for each of the anti-working class measures contained in the Tory election platform—anti-union laws; racist immigration laws; social service cuts; reducing the value of wages; running down industry, closing factories and increasing unemployment. These policies lost them the 1979 election.
The Tories therefore had a flying start and a Commons majority of 43 to back it up.
Confrontation
Thatcher took power as a government of confrontation with an openly declared plan of action designed to hit the working class at every level, increase the rate of exploitation and re-establish the unchallenged power of the employers.
The response of the trade union leaders to this was to open talks with the new Tory ministers and to pull back from even the level of struggle they had mounted against the Labour government.
No resistance was offered to the wave of Tory attacks:
*A strict monetarist policy which was to trigger the wholesale rundown of manufacturing industry in Britain.
*Cash limits in the public sector;
*A massive series of cuts affecting particularly women workers, tying them to the home and putting the burden back onto the family;
*Anti-union legislation drafted to hamstring the power of the unions.
Tax concessions
Thatcher justified this by saying that "the problem of Britain is a West German standard of living on a Panamanian economy."
At the same time Thatcher strengthened the class base of her government with tax concessions to the middle class and huge pay increases to the army, police, the judiciary and the management of nationalised industries.
Only five weeks after the election Thatcher lifted price controls and introduced a budget which increased VAT from 8 to 15% and introduced a series of measures which increased local authority rates, increased the price of gas, electricity and public transport; more than doubled prescription charges; further increased the cost of dental treatment and put up the cost of mortgages, bank overdrafts and the price of petrol.
As a result inflation rose to over 20%: but no resistance was offered by the trade union leaders. Thatcher became an example to the ruling class of the hard pressed capitalist world of a stable hard line government clearly and openly representing the interests of the ruling class in Britain.
If anyone doubted the complicity of the trade union leaders with the Tories they only had to look at events in BL.
Michael Edwardes, Thatcher's ideal manager and her mouthpiece in industry, announced the closure of 13 plants and the scrapping of 25,000 jobs. But the leaders of the CSEU actually supported the plan; argued in favour of it as a correct policy and countered any resistance to it in the BL workforce.
Thatcher and Edwardes quickly capitalised on this, and sacked Derek Robinson to initiate a new offensive against the shop stewards' movement.
Steel workers
Thatcher moved quickly to a confrontation with the steel workers. A 2% pay offer led to a strike call—and a massive response from the steel workers.
Thatcher was on the line. She wanted to defeat a major section of the working class in action: but the strike had the potential to spread and to bring the Tories down.
[Photograph of the Conservative Party conference. Caption: Tory monetarists: how will their eager supporters respond to this U-turn?]
The policies of the trade union leaders saved Thatcher. BL workers who had voted to strike were held back from joining the steel workers; the TUC squashed a general strike in Wales in defence of jobs; and dock delegates voted for a strike on the day that the steel workers were sent back to work.
Thatcher had survived, and whilst the steel workers had improved on the original pay offer, BSC was free to proceed with massive job cuts and plant closures.
The Workers Socialist League saw these events as a confirmation that the real possibility existed to bring the Tories down in this winter's pay round.
Thatcher, however, saw things differently. At the Tory Party conference she boldly claimed that nothing could deflect the Tories from their course or stop them achieving their aims.
"What, then, stands in our way? A prospect of another Winter of Discontent? I suppose it might. But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learned from experience: that we are coming slowly, painfully, to an Autumn of Understanding. I hope it will be followed by a Winter of Commonsense.
If it isn't, we shall not be diverted from our course. To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase the U-turn, I have only one thing to say.
You turn if you want to: the Lady's NOT for turning."
In fact the winter started with a victory for Thatcher. BL workers were cynically betrayed after voting overwhelmingly for strike action. The government capitalised on this and introduced their 6% wage limit for local authority government workers.
Again, many of the union leaders ran for cover. NUPE settled for 7½% for local authority manual workers. But in the docks jobs were saved by the threat of a national official dock strike.
It is against this background that the Tories were defeated by the miners last week. The strength of the working class emerged which had potentially existed from the beginning of the Thatcher government.
Edwardes
The apparently strong government fell apart as it would have done if the steel strike had been spread or if Thatcher had been confronted by other sections of the working class at an earlier stage.
[Photograph. Caption: Pym]
Edwardes would have collapsed in a similar way had the challenge come in BL.
The implications of the miners' victory are far reaching. A decisive move from the ranks of the NUM, supported by many officials at Area level has thrown the Thatcher government into disarray in the face of an unofficial strike.
As a shamefaced John Biffen—once Thatcher's high priest of monetarism—admitted at the weekend:
"What we have seen demonstrated over the last week is something which we have long known—and that is the capacity of certain sections of organised labour to exercise extra-parliamentary authority."
He admitted that other sections of workers had the miners' ability to force the government to change course: and he also admitted that in the face of such action Prior's anti-union Employment Act was powerless to hold workers back.
This is the lesson that must be taken into the whole labour movement. Workers fighting closures and redundancies; civil servants fighting on wages; local authority workers and tenants in struggle against Heseltine's cuts must follow the path of struggle mapped out by the miners. There is a real chance that the divided Thatcher government can be brought down.
In the wake of their humiliation they are reeling on every front. Thatcher's economic whizz-kid Walters has opposed the government's line on the strength of sterling: Leader of the House Frances Pym has hinted enigmatically at "tactical turns"; Lord Thorneycroft has joined the ranks of the doubters; and ex-Minister Norman St. John Stevas has stepped up his criticisms of Thatcher's "extremist" policies, in line with Geoffrey Rippon and other back benchers. Only the Institute of Directors has attacked Thatcher for taking too soft a line with the miners.
The Tories are divided; they are vulnerable; they can and must be brought down. And the working class has shown it has the strength to do it.
A boxed item printed alongside the article read:
As we go to press (Monday) it appears that water workers are following the example of the miners in pursuing their pay demands. Lancashire water workers have ignored the advice of their officials to hold their fire and voted to strike from tomorrow morning against the employers' 10% offer.
Such action could well force the pace of union negotiators who meet on Wednesday to discuss the next step after the overwhelming rejection of the offer by the 32,000 manual workers.